Analytical Validation of Macromodeling Techniques of Infilled RC Frames

Abstract

The present study focuses on validation of compressive strut models, in which infill wall is replaced with single and multi-equivalent diagonal struts. A full-scaled, one-bay and one-story reinforced concrete (RC) frame, representing weak sides of existing buildings widely used in Turkey, is produced and tested under lateral cyclic loading. Furthermore, the efficiency of three different strut models, commonly used in the literature to present the effects of walls on the RC frames, is investigated using finite element method. Consequently, the analytical results show that single equivalent strut model is an easy and influent way of representing global behavior of infilled RC frames. Additionally, using multi-struts will only cause small variations in global behavior of the system, whereas the failure mode of the RC frame is more accurately represented compared to single strut.